VLC For Capture And Conversion To Progressive DV?

[Kevin A. Sturges]

I’ve been using VLC Player to watch live streaming firewire output from my DV camera to my notebook. What I love about this is the beautifully smooth way VLC deinterlaces on the fly.

What I’m wondering is, since it can do this so well in real time, is there a way for it to write those files to my hard drive as progressive scan DV? I’ve looked around a bit and it SEEMS like it can do it, but the interface has me stumped.

The reason I’d like to do this is for converting my DV file to (fake) HD with Red Giants Instant HD program. The problem is, Instant HD requires progressive input, and my Canon Optura Xi is interlaced.

If VLC cannot do the capture/convert to progressive, is there some other solution? I am just using the firewire input on my P4 notebook.

Thanks, and sorry if this has been covered here before.

Kevin

PS> I also have Vegas Video 6

[Wayne Morellini]

I'm not getting any replies around here either, seriously. I'm sure there is some information linked on the web somewhere about this stuff, but I don't want to spend six hours googling it.

[Kevin A. Sturges]

Hey Wayne. It seems like a qood question. I'll let you know if I find out anything.

Kevin

[Gian Pablo Villamil]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sturges

... If VLC cannot do the capture/convert to progressive, is there some other solution? I am just using the firewire input on my P4 notebook...

The combination of Avisynth (www.avisynth.org), Virtualdub (www.virtualdub.org) and some of the various filters (www.neuron2.net, look for DGDecode and Smart Deinterlacer) will deliver high quality progressive video from DV input. In fact you may be able to do without the Red Giant program.

Basically you'll read in your DV file, separate fields (alternate lines), the smart deinterlacer will then read this and generate progressive video at double the frame rate (this is what VLC does), and then you can resize/interpolate to get higher resolutions, using some of the better algorithms, such Lanczos.

Also check out http://www.100fps.com/ for detailed info on how to go about it.

[Kevin A. Sturges]

Thanks Gian,

What I still don't understand is; can you capture the de-interlaced streams back into your hard drive and re-use them later?

[Seun Osewa]

After de-interlacing a video clip, all moving objects would be blurred.

[Gian Pablo Villamil]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sturges

Thanks Gian,

What I still don't understand is; can you capture the de-interlaced streams back into your hard drive and re-use them later?

Yes, that is what AviSynth + Virtualdub is for.

[Gian Pablo Villamil]

Originally Posted by Seun Osewa

After de-interlacing a video clip, all moving objects would be blurred.

No, not necessarily. That is why I suggested using an interpolated deinterlace filter. It will find edges of moving objects, and use info from *both* fields to reconstruct them.